4.09.2008

This is a follow-up on my recent post, Urban Bees & How to Help Them. Herewith are additional resources about native bees, bee-friendly gardening, and environmental practices that promote biodiversity.

Alternative Pollinators: Native Bees is a publication of the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (ATTRA). The article provides a nice overview of native bee species, tips on how to encourage bees to prosper in your area, a list of forage plants favored by native bees, info on constructing bee nests like those shown below, and tons of additional resources.The rich list of links on the Alternative Pollinators webpage will lead you in a thousand worthwhile directions, from info on bumblebee ID to an article on butterfly intelligence as compared to that of bees. There's also a halfway decent list of international resources on this site. Vertebrae and non-vertebrae pollinators are included.

I fell madly in love with this Bumblebee ID card. Alas, the species of native bumblebee included are limited to those in and around Utah. But what a wonderful infographic! I hope this will be emulated by biologists in other places who want to make it easier for the mere mortals among us to identify our local bumblebees. I spent time trying to do this in upstate New York last summer, and believe me, it wasn't easy—those bees are fast and linger only briefly upon each blossom! It was fun trying to figure out who was who, though.

Last but not least, there's a recent article on bee-friendly gardening called "Creating Buzz" in Audubon Magazine.

Honeybee Readzzzz

The Queen Must Die: And Other Affairs of Bees and Men, William Longgood

Robbing the Bees, Holley Bishop

Quotes of Note

"The cynicism that you have is not your real soul."—Yoko Ono

"The country that elected George Bush — sort of — because he seemed like he’d be more fun to have a beer with than Al Gore or John Kerry is really getting its comeuppance."—Gail Collins

"How do you inherit the earth? By being awake."—Joni Mitchell

Causing the right amount of trouble is an art form.”—Judith Coche

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."—Philip K. Dick

"A meddling beekeeper is said to be the bees' worst enemy, and this may be true."—Ormond Aebi, The Art and Adventure of Beekeeping

"For too long we have been locked in an old fashioned, reductionist approach, dealing with bees as if they were mere machines created solely for our benefit, instead of highly evolved, wild creatures, with which we are privileged to work."—Phil Chandler, The Barefoot Beekeeper

"Neither among the bees nor any other animals that have a ray of our intellect, do things happen with the precision our books record. Too many circumstances remain unknown to us."—Maurice Maeterlinck

"Whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of dirt."—Barbara Kingsolver

"Healthy, happy bees don't need any additives."—Dee A. Lusby

"When the bird and the book disagree, always believe the bird."—Audubon

"There is a certain valid moment for every cloud."—Paul Strand

Music to Bee By

"For the bee, honey is the ultimate reality. It represents the fulfillment of her life mission, the triumph over her enemies, the continuity of the hive, the justification for working herself to death. Honey is to bees what money in the bank is to people—a measure of prosperity and well-being. But there is nothing abstract or symbolic about honey, as there is about money, which has no intrinsic value. There is more real wealth in a pound of honey, or a load of manure for that matter, than all the currency in the world. We often destroy the world's real wealth to create an illusion of wealth, confusing symbol and substance."—Wm. Longgood, The Queen Must Die